I must support those who advocate close and careful control of the reading of their children. My parents permitted me to read The Collected Writings of Sigmund Freud (Dover paperback) at age 11, and The Theory of the Leisure Class at 12. My older sister gave me the larger hardback Complete Collection on Freud for my 14th birthday (she was strange too). No one objected to The Odyssey (W.H.D.Rouse translation) when I was 13 (although my mother did object to how much I was spending in related references on mythology - I still have Edith Hamilton's nice little one) or to the dozen odd Shakespeare plays I went through before entering High School.

Having been permanently warped by this and other similar exposure, I offer myself as the prototypical bad example of what such stuff can do. WARN YOUR CHILDREN!